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Module Specifications.

Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025

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Date posted: September 2024

Module Title Psychotherapy & Mental Health
Module Code NS5018 (ITS) / PST1009 (Banner)
Faculty Science & Health School Nursing, PsyT & Comm Health
Module Co-ordinatorRay O'Neill
Module Teachers-
NFQ level 9 Credit Rating 5
Pre-requisite Not Available
Co-requisite Not Available
Compatibles Not Available
Incompatibles Not Available
Repeat the module
Repeat the Module: The assessment of this module is inextricably linked to the delivery. The student must reattend the module in its entirety in order to be reassessed.
Description

The purpose of this module is to advance students’ understandings of mental health issues in order to bring a critical reflective, multi-theoretical, and cross-cultural sociological perspectives and humility to their clinical psychotherapy work and engagements. The module also attends to how participants can use an adaptable and integrative framework to psychotherapy assessment, case formulation, and treatment planning. In this module students will develop knowledge and skills in integrative psychotherapy practice in the context of working with the diversity of clients, with complex multifaceted histories and needs, with a particular focus on trauma care awareness and meeting resilience. The approach adopted will address the needs of participants as theoretically informed and skills-based integrative psychotherapy practitioners. Students are expected to attend lectures, seminars, and discussions, along with complementing their self-directed learning preparations and activities through supplementary readings in relevant theoretical and empirical literature. Ongoing personal reflection and response-ability is core to both engagement with this module and its assessment.

Learning Outcomes

1. Critically appreciate, in both personal and clinical capacities, how early experiences and traumatic events influence development.
2. Personally reflect on, and take responsibility for how social biases, prejudices, and blind spots both positive or negative may hold conscious or unconscious implications for both individual and cultural aspects of mental health. Students will hold awareness around factors such as race, gender, sexuality, and social class within mental health discourses and practices.
3. Critically appreciate and reflect on one’s own, as well as society’s differing assessments, judgments, and understandings of addiction within the individual and within/for society.
4. Demonstrate critical understandings of biopsychosocial cultural and spiritual dimensions along with multi-disciplinary approaches to diagnosis, categorisation, formulation, and treatment.
5. Apply the principles of an integrative and developmental framework to assessment, case-formulation, treatment planning, and outcomes to better inform clinical practice and supervisory engagements.
6. Appreciate and question, both for themselves and for clients, the interplay of sociological and cultural factors on mental health and mental health discourse.
7. Engage in ongoing active reflective engagement and practice to track bias, presumptions, questions, concerns and learnings that evolve and emerge through the activities and learnings on this module and evidence your ongoing formation as an integrative, reflective, clinician.



Workload Full-time hours per semester
Type Hours Description
Lecture15Didactic Teaching/ Lectures
Directed learning11.5Seminar groups; Application of Theory to Practice; Therapeutic Skills Practice; Personal and Professional Awareness Activities.
Group work20Small group research preparations and in-class presentations on set specific themes on Psychotherapy and Mental Health.
Fieldwork15Module Workbook and Reflective Learning Journal engagements across the module in response to in-class preparations, key questions, and provocations.
Independent Study63.5Self-directed learning; Course Reading; Literature Searching, Interactive Oral Assessment Preparation, and Submission.
Total Workload: 125

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

Early Influences on Development:
Influences of a range of early infant/childhood experiences on psychological development and ongoing mental health.

Trauma and Resilience
Conceptualisation of trauma from different theoretical perspectives: psychological impact of traumas, Recognising and Building Resilience.

Loss, Bereavement and Suicide
Critical consideration of mental health and psychotherapy discourses and clinical work, in relation to loss, bereavement and suicide.

Addiction and Society
A critical consideration of addiction and differing discourses around addictive and/or compulsive behaviour, for and within both the individual and society.

Diversity in Approaches to Formulation and Treatment
Multidisciplinary & Culturally competent approaches to diagnosis, categorisation, formulation & treatment of mental health issues.

Integrative Psychotherapy and Mental Health
Applying the principles of an integrative and developmental framework in psychotherapy practice.

Assessment Breakdown
Continuous Assessment100% Examination Weight0%
Course Work Breakdown
TypeDescription% of totalAssessment Date
Oral ExaminationNot an Oral exam but an Interactive Oral Assessment on Student’s Clinical Integration of Module materials into their clinical Practice40%Sem 1 End
Reflective journalModule Workbook and Reflective Learning Journal engagements across the module in response to in-class preparations, key questions, and provocations.50%As required
Group project Small group presentations on set specific themes on Psychotherapy and Mental Health.10%Week 12
Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories:
Resit category 1: A resit is available for both* components of the module.
Resit category 2: No resit is available for a 100% continuous assessment module.
Resit category 3: No resit is available for the continuous assessment component where there is a continuous assessment and examination element.
* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a Continuous Assessment/Examination split; where the module is 100% continuous assessment, there will also be a resit of the assessment
This module is category 1
Indicative Reading List

  • Bradshaw, John: 2006, Healing The Shame That Binds You, Health Communications,, New York,
  • Brampton, Sally: 2009, Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression, Bloomsbury, London,
  • Chayut, Noam: 2013, The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust, Verso Press,
  • Davies, James: 2014, Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good, Icon Books, London,
  • Eddo-Lodge, Reni: 2017, Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, Bloomsbury,
  • George, Sheldon: 2016, Trauma and Race, Baylor University Press,
  • Hardy, Kenneth: 2023, Racial Trauma: Clinical Strategies and Techniques for Healing Invisible Wounds, Norton Press,
  • Herman, Judith: 2015, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, Basic Books,
  • Kernberg, O. F.: 0, The psychotherapeutic treatment of borderline patients, In J. Paris (ed.), Borderline personality disorder (pp. 261 – 284), American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC:,
  • Lalor, K. (ed.): 2001, The End of Innocence, Oak Tree Press, Dublin, 1860762204
  • Levine, P.: 2010, In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 9781556439438
  • Mace, C.: 1995, The Art and Science of Assessment in Psychotherapy, Routledge, London,
  • Mate, Gabor: 2018, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Vermillion, New York,
  • Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C.: 2006, Trauma and the body, Norton, London,
  • Orange, D.M., Atwood, G.E., & Stolorow, R.D: 1997, Working Intersubjectively, The Analytic Press., Hillsdale, NJ,
  • Perry, Philippa: 2020, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Penguin, London,
  • Read, J. & Sanders, P.: 2011, A straight talking introduction to the causes of mental health problems, PCCS Ltd., Ross-on-Wye, Herts., 9781906254193
  • Rothschild, B.: 2000, The body remembers, Norton, New York, 0393703274
  • Salberg, Jill & Grand, Sue: 2017, Wounds of History: Repair and Resilience in the Trans-Generational Transmission of Trauma, Routledge,
  • Sanderson, C.: 2013, Counselling skills for working with trauma, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 9781849053266
  • Scheper-Hughes, Nancy: 2001, Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics, Metal Illness in Rural Ireland, U of California Press.,
  • Slepian, Michael: 2022, The Secret Life of Secrets, Robinson Press,
  • Smith, Julie: 2022, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, Penguin,
  • Stoute, Beverly J., Slevin Michael: 2023, The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter, Routledge,
  • Tracey, Patrick: 2008, Stalking Irish Madness, Random Press, New York,
  • Van der Kolk, Bessel: 2019, The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma, Penguin, London,
  • Whitaker, Robert: 2015, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Broadway Books, New York,
  • Wolynn, Mark: 2017, It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End It,
Other Resources

64076, Journal, 0, Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 64077, Journal, 0, Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 64078, Journal, 0, Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice., 64079, Journal, 0, Journal of Counselling Psychology, 64080, Journal, 0, The Counselling Psychologist, 64081, Journal, 0, European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 64082, Journal, 0, Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, 64083, Journal, 0, Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, 64084, Journal, 0, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 64085, On-line data base, 0, PsycArticles, 64086, On-line data base, 0, SAGE journals online, 64087, On-line data base, 0, ScienceDirect, 64088, Journal, 0, Psychotherapy Research,

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